Swim for penguins!

The Grey District Aquatic Centre is planning a Virtual Cook Strait Swim to raise funds for local charities. The West Coast Penguin Trust will be there and we need you!

The Trust has been invited by the wonderful organiser, Lynnette O’Connor, to take up the challenge, which is to get swimmers to swim the 1185 laps needed to cover the 29km across the Strait and raise funds to help protect penguins on the coast.

Paul Crawford and Crawford Refrigeration have stepped forward to lead the sponsorship and the swim for the penguin trust, which is fantastic as we’re told he’s a great swimmer! And now we need some more swimmers to join him in this challenge.

The event is on 11th April between noon and 4pm. It’s right in the middle of the Easter school holiday and it’s a great opportunity for families to come and get involved; the only expectation is that swimmers can swim 2 lengths – so if I managed that, everyone else could pick up the other 1183 laps between them and any non-swimmers can cheer on the swimmers! The more swimmers we have, the better it will be and we’ll be flying through the laps like penguins!

The idea is that we swim in groups of four in our lane, for about 10-15 minutes, and then the next group hop in for their turn, then the next group, or the first group, depending on who’s ready and rested. Someone will be counting the laps and our team will be across the Strait in no time!

If you’d like to swim for penguins, please let us know by email: info@bluepenguin.org.nz, and there’s a sponsor form for you to collect pledges here: VCS Swim sponsor form. If you’d like to sponsor some laps, we’d love to hear from you and you could choose to sponsor one swimmer, a certain number of laps, or any combination!